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Metro Fires Technicians Who Left Escalator Hatch Open, Injuring Rider

By: David Schultz // April 29, 2011
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A woman fell through an open hatch near an escalator, like the one at the bottom of these Metro escalators, at the Pentagon Metro last week. The Metro employees that left the hatch open have since been fired.
Nathasha Lim
A woman fell through an open hatch near an escalator, like the one at the bottom of these Metro escalators, at the Pentagon Metro last week. The Metro employees that left the hatch open have since been fired.

A 52-year-old woman was walking in the Pentagon Metro station early in the morning last week when she fell through an opening at the top of an escalator. She injured her knee and her face, and spent two days in the hospital.

Metro says technicians working on the escalator the night before left the hatch open and didn’t barricade it off.

"It really should be kept closed," says Dave Kubicek, Metro's deputy general manager.

since it was late at night, the technicians were working without supervision, says Kubicek. It's a policy that may need to be revisited, he adds.

"We're looking for consistency on everything that we're trying to do, instead of one group doing it one way, one group doing it another way," he says.

Metro says it fired two of the escalator technicians involved in the incident the day after it took place.

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